TRENDnet 300Mbps Dual Band Wireless N Gigabit Router

This is the TRENDnet 300Mbps Dual Band Wireless N Gigabit Router that offers up a quality wireless 802.11n Gigabit router in the TEW-672GR with many brilliant features. It is only let down by slightly poor Gigabit LAN transfer performance and inability to use both 2.4GHz and 5Ghz bands at the same time.

Tweak Town have given this router a hands-on review over 7 pages and in their final thoughts they had this to say “Now that we’ve finished our exhausting long look at the TRENDnet TEW-672GR router, we are left with mixed impressions regarding our final thoughts of the product. Here’s why.

On the high notes, the TEW-672GR router manages to pack in many very useful and interesting features, which we’ve never seen before. We really liked the ability to manually turn wireless on and off at the back of the router. We liked the fact that it is Dual Band but weren’t so keen on the fact that you cannot operate 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands at the same time. We liked that the WAN and LAN ports are different colors to easily differentiate. We liked the style of the router and the fact that it doesn’t generate an abnormal amount of heat.

On the not so good notes, though, Gigabit LAN performance is a good way behind the D-Link DIR-655 router and that is something we didn’t expect to see. Even after re-testing many times, the results were the same. If you are the type of person that does a lot of transfers from PC to PC over the LAN, this is something you should keep in mind.

When we begin to examine wireless performance, the results are really inconsistent with no real clear-cut winner between the two runners. At 1m range the TRENDnet router is out in front by a fair margin, but at 10m ranges the lead goes back to the DIR-655. When we move the client system to the second floor, TRENDnet is back out in front again. It’s difficult to pick a winner when it comes down to wireless performance between the two, but considering that the TRENDnet router won two of the three tests, it has to take the first prize, even though it’s not entirely convincing. I personally use the D-Link DIR-655 router and even after seeing the TEW-672GR perform slightly better overall in the wireless tests, I still use the D-Link product by choice. It will all come down to your individual needs - be it better LAN performance or better WLAN performance.

TRENDnet has done a good job with the web-based interface of the TEW-672GR with some good features and a couple that are unique such as multiple SSIDs on a single router (D-Link DIR-655 has a “Guest Zone” feature but that is only one extra SSID and it doesn’t include zoned MAC filtering) and cable status indication, but the D-Link router still feels more intuitive and has more options and settings. Since TRENDnet doesn’t go as deep as D-Link with the amount of options and features available, the TEW-672GR interface does feel easier to use and somewhat less cluttered than the D-Link router, which might be just perfect for users looking for a less comprehensive interface. Another thing I didn’t like about the TEW-672GR interface was that there were no help links – D-Link has help links all throughout its interface, which explain what each setting does.

D-Link has also recently dropped the price of the DIR-655 by $30 USD to around $100 USD, which makes it more affordable than the TEW-672GR by the same amount which costs a little over $130 USD – compare the prices here for reference. If the TEW-672GR were the same price as the matured and well-rounded DIR-655 or better still, slightly cheaper, it would have gotten a higher rating. But with the current firmware, our opinion is that there are some better routers on the market even though TRENDnet has still done a mighty good job with the TEW-672GR.

TRENDnet would be well placed releasing a solid firmware upgrade for the TEW-672GR to fix the aforementioned issues and then I’ll gladly replace the DIR-655 with it in a heartbeat, but until then we are unable to give it our very high praises”.

Read the 7 page review.

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